


Masks and Mistakes

by vampyrekat



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M, Working title was 'making out in enemy territory' and that's the tone, this was an excuse to hurt the discord server with fluff and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 00:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12664596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampyrekat/pseuds/vampyrekat
Summary: Gleb should’ve pulled back. He should’ve asked her what she meant, he should have pressed his advantage and demanded that - since she clearly wanted him - Anya give up something of equal value.He should have.He didn't.Decisions are made, for better and for worse.





	Masks and Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Remember how I said CTNP was it's own thing and I was done riffing on it? Not by a long shot, kiddos.

Anya wore a white mask that didn’t hide much of her face at all, and she was laughing at Dmitry as he - admittedly poorly - waltzed her around the room. And then she curtsied to him and was in the arms of another royal, and Gleb realized he’d been staring a little too long and resumed stalking around the room. He noticed - how could he not? - when she stumbled violently back against the wall, pressing her hands against her head. He moved as if to - catch her? comfort her? - but she stood and started walking towards the floor as the music began again.

He caught her arm on instinct as she passed, twirling her back into his embrace as the music began in earnest. She danced like someone who’d been born into it, moving with grace even as she tried to struggle away.

“I’m sorry, I’m looking for my friend.”

“Always in a hurry,” he said lightly, trying for humor and probably ending up somewhere around mocking. She stumbled and Gleb tensed, half-carrying her through the remainder of the turn. There was fear in her eyes when she looked up, and there was no smiles for him, not today and quite probably never again. His heart felt like stone in his chest.

“Gleb,” she said, voice low, and he felt like she’d stabbed him.

“I wasn’t expecting to meet a street sweeper in a club of deposed Russian royalty,” he said conversationally, and felt Anya grow even more tense in his arms as they danced. “Paris is no place for a good and loyal Russian.”

Her jaw tightened and she stared at him defiantly. “And yet we are both in Paris.”

“I was sent here, Anya. I think you know why.” He held her closer as they spun together, the rest of the world blurring. She fit into his arms too well, and if Gleb didn’t have a mission, he would find it all too easy to fall into those hauntingly blue eyes and forget the rest of the world.

“I saw you the night we jumped from the train,” she said neutrally, her posture so heartbreakingly regal. He remembered her throwing herself from the train with a frightening vividness and his hand tightened on hers convulsively. She was watching him carefully as she added, “You didn’t draw a weapon.”

He felt his stride falter. “And risk you falling?” He laughed, but it sounded forced even to him. “My orders are to bring the false Anastasia back.” He wouldn’t even entertain the idea that she was really what she pretended to be, because if she was -

“And the real Anastasia?” she asked. Gleb gritted his teeth, ignoring the question and starting a more complicated figure, giving him the excuse to look away from her penetrating gaze. She didn’t look away from his face, and he knew, even with the mask, she could read what he was thinking: he had a gun beneath his vest and he should use it, because if she was Anastasia, she could destroy everything he’d ever worked for. He took several deep breaths, and when the movement ended, he smiled at her.

“You look beautiful, Anya.” He wasn’t lying; as a street sweeper, she’d had an effortless beauty that was unmarred by the grime. Here, in a simple dress with a simple mask, she might as well have descended from heaven. She smiled, and his heart beat in his throat. Like sunshine , he thought wildly.

“I’ve never seen you out of uniform,” she replied, noncommittally. “How did you talk your way in?”

He laughed, too sharply, and spun her within the circle of his right arm to cover it. She didn’t need to know. “Royalty is not hard to fool,” he almost-answered. Her blue eyes were almost mocking.

“I recognized you.”

He stopped dancing; they had fallen out of the pattern anyway. They were near a door that lead outside into some sort of garden. He hesitated only a moment before moving towards it, half-backwards so he didn’t somehow lose her despite the hand clutched in his.

“ _ You _ are not like them,” he informed her fervently. “You worked for what you have. You didn’t steal it from the people - people like  _ us. _ ”

Perhaps that was why he refused to see her as Anastasia, he reflected, as they stepped out in to the cool Parisian air. If Anya was a Romanov brought up in the new order, then perhaps the Romanovs had not been beyond saving.

“You don’t belong here, Anya.”

He hadn’t let go of her hand and she hadn’t pulled it away, and in the silence it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She’d stopped walking a beat after he had, and they were dancing-close again, close enough that he could see the faint freckles that dotted her nose. She’d been in the sun too much, over the years; she had worked too much, suffered too much.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, voice tense, eyes fixed on his jaw so as not to meet his gaze. “Paris is my home, now.”

“It doesn’t  _ have  _ to be,” he insisted, putting a hand under her chin, trying to coax those unsettlingly-blue eyes up to meet his. She moved too easily, and they were too close, and his breath caught. The white mask hid most of her expression, but her eyes spoke volumes.

“I can’t give up,” she said, and he felt her breath against his cheek, “not now.”

“Make a different choice,” he - asked? Implored?  _ Demanded _ ? But his voice was soft and almost breathy as well. The Deputy Commissioner had abandoned him, and it was simply Gleb Vaganov who was overwhelmed. Perhaps she sensed it. Anya half-hissed through her teeth, and it sounded like  _ I can’t  _ before one of them - he thought it was her, but he had been leaning, hadn’t he? - surged forward, their lips meeting at last, in the garden of the deposed royalty’s playground.

Gleb should’ve pulled back. He should’ve asked her what she meant, he should have pressed his advantage and demanded that - since she clearly wanted  _ him _ \- she give up something of equal value.

He should have.

He pressed forward, a low moan drawn from his chest, and Anya sighed and parted her lips - oh, just slightly - and he felt like his heart would stop. Another step forward, his mask jostled up to almost cover his eye, and Anya stepped backwards like they were still dancing, her arms coming up to rest on his neck. A perfect mockery of the waltz just a few minutes earlier, Gleb thought, and then Anya  _ pulled _ him closer, and another step back, and - her back hit the wall of the Neva Club, the low notes of the music inside almost vibrating through their chests.

Anya broke away to breathe and Gleb could feel his own breath coming ragged in the still night air.

“I’ve wanted to do that since -” She laughed, low, urgent, and moved close again, her lips clumsily trying to meet his.

“Anya,” he murmured, and then it was  _ unbearable _ and he reached up to tug at the ribbons of her mask. The mask came away easily, and Gleb pulled until the ribbons fell from her hair to her collarbone, and then he paused because - Anya had always been so beautiful despite the fear he could tell his position inspired in her, but France suited her so vibrantly.

It was heresy to think that, he thought ironically, but his mouth must’ve missed some memo, because what almost came out was  _ I love you _ and he only dodged it by pressing his lips to hers again. If the removal of her mask had spurred some fear in her, there was no way to tell; her teeth found his bottom lip with a sharp nip and Gleb pressed a step closer.

There was nowhere for her to go, not without somehow warping into the brick of the club, but Anya didn’t seem uncomfortable, simply squirmed a little until she seemed satisfied, then pulled him closer by the back of his neck, and - Gleb hadn’t had much cause for beautiful young women to be  _ squirming _ against him, in his line of work, but it was  _ good _ and overwhelming. He pulled back with a broken breath and Anya whispered ‘ _ Gleb’  _ as though she was protesting, and it nearly undid him.

He pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers, trying to ignore the way both of them were breathing heavily, the way Anya was still so close to him. She was unafraid of him -she always had been - and he was  _charmed_ by it. He leaned back, regretful, but Anya grabbed the lapels of his suit and clung to him with a fierceness he could hardly have imagined when he met her. 

“I can’t,” he murmured, not sure what it was he _couldn't_ do, and Anya hissed through her teeth. She reached up to pull his mask off roughly, the inside scraping his skin and baring his expression to her icy eyes.

“You  _ did _ ,” she argued, as the cold air hit his cheeks. Her lips were soft and swollen slightly and Gleb couldn't keep his eyes off them. He wanted to return the bite from earlier, to see her squirm and laugh and forget both their positions and the situation around them. Her blue eyes were all too perceptive when he finally met them. “I’m not the only one who has to make a  _ choice _ , am I?”

“There is no choice,” he insisted. “Not for me -” And then it all hit him - an assassin, a policeman, and he was kissing his mark in the garden of the enemy, as thought he didn't care if he was caught and _he might not care if only she kissed him again -_ and he leaned forward to press his forehead against hers. “Don’t do this,” he pleaded, for a moment he was fully laid bare in front of her. Anya’s hand still rested against the back of his neck, and her breath was against his jaw, and if Gleb hadn't still been thinking of the royals who would be only too happy to kill the spy in their midst he might have been lost.

“I can’t leave,” she repeated stubbornly, and Gleb choked down the sob that wanted to escape. He took a deep breath, then pulled away, the mask of the deputy commissioner firmly in place even if his domino mask was left in her hands. He took a step back, then another, forcing his feet to move.  _Just like dancing_. He just had to fake the steps.

“There’s only one way to end this,” he warned, and Anya’s lips - still so kiss-roughened - quirked like she might smile or cry.

“I suppose,” she allowed, and Gleb turned on his heel and started walking.

It wasn’t until he was halfway to his hotel that he realized the white mask was still clutched in his cold fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message me on [tumblr](http://vampyrekatwrites.tumblr.com/)!


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